Monday, November 11, 2013

I had to start with that beautiful picture of organization. It's a store. Yes, I know. But, I really wish I could have all my stocked fabric waiting to be made into things looking that neat and artfully stored. I however have about thirty piles of scraps and several project piles with half finished pieces.

The good news. We are rounding the end of the Holiday Line and it is so close to being done I am almost tasting the finishing threads. The entire design team is hunchback and stiff from cutting, pinning, and sewing for the last few weeks. Their brains are fried from finishing designing, pattern making, and event planning.

But it is worth it. Friday we will be unveiling our entire Holiday 2014 Line. This is really exciting for us because in the spring we showed just a small portion of our spring 2013 line and it was received very well. This holiday line launch will be much bigger for us. Thanks for your support and patience while we work night and day to get ready.

I really look up to all the other small, made in America, did it all yourself designers out there making their dreams come true. Because designer dreaming is not easy, but its worth it. Keep up the good work.

Now, it's 1:03am. I have to wake up at 6am for another long day of sewing. So! Off to sleep. Keep tuned for how the show goes!

Monday, November 4, 2013

I was working ever so diligently for the last few days sewing my little heart out. With a Fashion Event to showcase my Holiday line just a week and a half from now I have been feeling the pressure to work as many hours as my tiny fingers and eyes can handle. I was doing so well. In fact, when my partner in crime has an appointment to go to I was so excited to say I stayed and worked through a potential break opportunity.

However, I am going to put it frankly. I got bit right in the butt by that decision. Literally. I was working along for almost two hours with out any major hiccup. [A miracle in itself.] Then right as I'm feeling the high of making real progress, I shovel my bottom half just a half of a foot over to get a betting angle on cutting out a dress, and I sit on my pin magnet.

I scared both dogs, both cats, probably the bearded dragon two rooms away, and myself with my initial response. Which was a low, almost manly, yell and then louder shrieking when I had to pull pins out of my left butt cheek. Literally they were jammed right into the side of my left hip/butt cheek. I now have two very large punctures in my left side. Each puncture was home to about three pins for what seemed like two hours but was probably just two seconds. [See attached picture for said vampire pins.]

Like the woman, Mikhaela Reid, from www.polkadotoverload.com I too have days where I feel like a total amateur and totally overloaded. She always write funny quips about her bad days where she feels like sewing won. That was one of those moments. I spend at least twenty to thirty minutes nursing both my bottom side and my dignity. I also put on a second pair of pants. Just for extra protection. Which was smart, because I almost sat on the magnet again being so jumpy trying to cut dresses out after.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

I have never really been obsessed with pintrest...until this holiday season rolled around. My friend Sarah was sending me pictures from pintrest so I finally opened a personal account for myself to see all these cool photos she was sending me. I am officially soooooo obsessed.

Why? Because I usually just put my store mannequins in holiday attire and put a Holiday Collection sign out. But, all this time I was missing out on the awesome joys of window dressing. Not that I don't do any holiday decorating, it's just that I have never gone all out on my store window. Inside the shop I love to put up a tree and decorate and hang stockings and ornaments. This year I will be working on the window so stay tuned for our holiday window display that I make...I will have to post pictures. Now, the big step is deciding what I'm going to do with it.

Those pictures have given me some good ideas though...I'm thinking lights and feathers and white.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

So a few weeks ago I pulled this photo and wanted to save it to look at more from this designer. But, unfortunately I didn't save the info from it or the link. If anyone knows what designer this is please let me know, I'm interested in their work!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

What do I sew in? Sweatpants and a pull over fleece. What is my favorite day outfit at the office? Zip-up and jeans. How about when I'm at the front of the shop? V-neck, jeans, and a button down sweater. I manage to wear a variation of every single one of these outfits in about 35 different ways. I own about 20 V-Neck tees. I might own close to 30 pairs of jeans. And, probably more big zip-ups. And even though I love the ease of this kind of dressing, I can't help but notice my closet full of wonderful clothes that don't fit into this category.

I am an avid shopper. I am also an avid designer and work on my line. Being a designer leaves me everyday working on dressing other people. I love it. I love making things for people to wear. I love putting people in my designs and finding ways to incorporate into their wardrobe. So why is it so hard for me to get my self styled every morning?

My reasoning: I want to be comfortable and able to work my best. Oh that's valid on sewing days. But I should be working on styling my clothes better on all the other days. My other reasoning: I'm very busy from when I wake up until I go to bed working on my line, website, and everything in between. And taking the time to really style something for myself could be saved for a customer at the shop.

Until I read an article on how to wear hard to style garments. Even though I'm not worried about hard to style clothing, just any at all, I read it. The article suggested that you take out seven hangers and hang up all the clothes you are trying to wear that week. Hang the entire outfit on one hanger, accessories included. And then it won't take up time each morning to find something to wear when you are tired.

So I did that. I planned out just three outfits this week. But! I really love how it turned out. The first few pictures are what I picked out and put on the hanger earlier this week. Then the bottom picture is of me wearing it on a regular day at the shop instead of my normal work outfit.

How does it feel? Amazing. I felt so put together. I know that when I style other people sometimes they are looking at me like why should I trust this girl in street clothes to pull together a beautiful dressy outfit. Until they see what I can do. But even though my style is very odd I still know how to dress other people. Showing off my different style is a good way to show people I can work with all styles.

My goal is to start working in all my different pieces each week. I'll let you know how it goes. No more go to everyday uniform just because I'm busy. I of course will always find a place for it. Put its place is between styled outfits.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

I bought my first camera, half
gifted to me, for the very reason of taking my own pictures for my website and
look book. I realized quickly that I needed a studio and a load of other things
that I did not have. So I hired a professional photographer with a studio to
shoot our website. But, I also take a lot of the non-studio photos myself.

I felt as if the investment was
paying off. I could do my own photography day to day if needed when the moment
struck me and I wanted to show off what I was doing. It made blogging easier.
It made getting new product previewed quicker. But then one day I was shooting
photos of a new skirt with a friend of mine and looked down at my feet to spot
something sprouting. I quickly bent over to see the pod like bud breaking
through the new spring ground.

My model waiting patiently as I
continued to photograph several other oddly shaped plants. And then I got back
to the photo session.

It wasn’t until I was home pulling
the photos of my computer that I realized I didn’t have anything to do with the
photos of plants. I’m not a nature photographer. They really didn’t have a
place to go. So, I left them on my desktop.

I stared at the bud in one of the
pictures for weeks. It was so beautiful that I didn’t want to delete the photo,
but still didn’t know what to do with it. Finally it came to me. The shape
reminded me of a skirt blooming upside down from the fresh ground. So what did
I do with it? I sketched it. I sketched it twice. Now there is a slew of
sketches and a prototype of this skirt in our studio.

A few weeks after the first sketch
I was exiting my house in the evening and realized I was in love with the
blooming tree in my yard. So I ran in and took some pictures. Honestly, I took
tons of pictures. So many that my neighbor asked me what I was photographing
our tree for. I told her in home art work to hang up. Which, even though would
have been a good idea, was not my initial intention. Like the first set of
photos, I did not have a clue what to do with the photos I was taking. They weren’t
going on my website or my blog. They were just going to sit on my desktop
again.

This time I found the use for these
in a few days. I was in the studio with a dress I wanted to make and couldn’t
decide on the fabric. As I was scanning online I glimpsed at the photo again
and immediately went to our fabric bolts. I knew I wanted to make the dress in
the same colors as the photo I had taken.

And currently, that dress in
charcoal and rose, is selling on our website. The question should not have been
what should I do with these photos, but why the heck didn’t I think about it
before. I find most of my inspiration from nature. Sometimes when inspired I am
able to write it down. Other times I try to remember it until I write it down
but never do. The camera is not just a convenience. It’s a tool for capturing
my inspiration when it hits.

Yes, I still use it to mostly take
pictures of my clothes for the business. But now you’ll find me every few days,
pulled over on a back country road, stomping through the brush taking pictures
of what inspires me. I can’t think of a better way to enjoy my camera.

If you enjoy these photos and want to use them please provide proper credit to Rum and Couture with links. Thank you.

Growing up I was always interested
in fashion. In fact my start was for a few of my Barbie’s who wore cut up and
styled socks for gowns. That was until my mom started looking for my socks
matches and then that was the end of that. Well, that was the end of the socks.
But that only stirred me to find other avenues. My next adventure was into
paper dolls. When our house ran out of paper my mother took me to sewing
classes and the rest is history.

While I was learning to make
clothing my only model was myself. Of course it was! I was designing everything
I was making for me and occasionally for my identical body double of a cousin.
(Her mother is a seamstress who taught me everything I know.) I felt that I
could open any magazine and pick out anything a model was wearing and wear it
the same. Because I was a size zero, and only lacking about four inches of
height, I was shaped like the girls in the magazines.

Surprisingly enough though, I hated
the way my body was shaped. I had no bottom and lacked any boobs. I blamed it
on the fact that I was flat chested. I blamed my self hatred on the fact that I
had the smallest butt on the planet. I sometimes lamented over the fact that I
could have tried modeling if I wasn’t one inch below average height. In some
ways I thought that would have brought me to terms with my body.

I played sports in high school and
then in college, all while living on a diet of Code Red Mountain Dew and
Tacobell. (In high school it was Code Red Mountain Dew and Pizza Bites.) Even
though I ate a ton of food I was still a measly 103lbs and often asked if I was
anorexic. While super rude and inappropriate to ask anyone ever, I realized I
didn’t look healthy. But often the comments came in were, “well you’re lucky,
you have the body of a model.”

Did I want the “body of a model”
when it meant I looked like I had an eating disorder and no muscle in my whole
body? My dilemma was that I was so worried about working out and bulking up I
didn’t even try. Until a good friend of my slapped some sense into me. Not only
that, some of the girls I was going to school with began to lift weights and
working out on a different level. After a year or so of watching them transform
into fit and toned individuals, I realized I wanted to be fit as well.Enter changing my diet and lifting weights.

So what really changed? Well first
my diet. I still eat chocolate and strawberry milkshakes and Tacobell. But I
also eat fruits and lean meats and vegetables daily. I started lifting weights.
And I now weigh twenty pounds more.What
hasn’t changed? My pants size hasn’t changed. Muscle weighs more than fat.
Apparently, it weighs a lot more than fat.

My vision of what a model should
look like has also changed. I used to use the thinnest girls who applied and
looked closest to the girls in the twenty fashion magazines I subscribe to.
Now, I pick girls who closely resemble the fit women in the additional twenty
fitness magazines I subscribe to. If this was a short text I would have typed
“lol” by now due to the shear ridiculous amount of magazines that show up at my
house each week. Are their body types a reach for most people? Yes. But, they
are a healthy reach. It’s never bad to strive to be healthy and fit if you set
realistic goals and know that fitness is in every size.I hope my choice of models encourages that.

Monday, August 26, 2013

As I design for my collections,
part of the process is learning how my clothes are going to fit each size of
model. Our fit models are used to represent a size that will be wearing our
line. The process of hiring fit models is fun and allows me to see some of my
clothing on real live models as we make them.

Choosing fit models was a new
process for me. Going through the dozens of girls that could potentially be fit
models was not only fun, it was challenging. This process was not about the
look of the face as much as it was how the clothes were going to fit them.

The fit model I chose for my spring
line was a size zero who works out and was toning to build muscle. Not your
average “skinny” girl. She even said she felt like she might have too muscular legs for the modeling job.

While not representative of the
whole industry, some of the girls that I interviewed told me that they ate very
little and exercised very little to stay thin with out looking muscular. But,
something occurred to me while doing this. Why is having a model who has
visible muscle a bad thing.

While fitting the model we picked,
I realized that I liked the look of our clothing on a model that was thin but
clearly fit. In a way it seemed to show a healthier side to being a model than
just being as thin as possible at all costs.

Our model works out and eats
healthy. That’s something I am proud to advertise. I don’t want to encourage
girls to become stick thin from not eating and just wasting away. If someone
wants to look like a model and work out and eat right to get there then that is
a good idea. Because at whatever size you are, size 0 to plus and beyond, if you
are eating right and working out in a healthy way then you already look like a
model for your size.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

I was having so much fun at the shop the other day that I realized I had not even styling anything recently. But I was loving my outfit! I even realized that this outfit consists of two super awesome thrifted pieces. I love to shop and when I can incorporate my thrift finds I get so excited! Enjoy. Plus, Stay tuned for my new pieces I'm putting up!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

It's a leather and lace kinda day. I paired the seventies inspired leather skirt that is from The Limited with a white lace tank from Charlotte Russe. Because neither are still available online the links are to similar pieces.

Until next time...I'm designer Dreaming <3 nbsp="">3>

p.s. I joined lookbook! You can Hype my looks and help my get my looks seen!
p.p.s If you like to style outfits then you should join its such a great community of fashion.

Plus, the collar is button down so I have the odd which way will it go collar because I didn't iron the shirt to go for a softer look. This button down is my favorite of all my button downs because of it's softness.

What do you think of the denim shirt trend? Does the denim on denim work or is it something you would not try?

I wanted to get a good before picture because later this spring we will be remodeling and decorating the shop. I cannot wait to show you the after picture. Of course we have a while. But with my memory I will start the work on the changes before getting good pictures of the store how it is now! I'll be keeping the stone tile and the main shape. But we are going to try and do something with the hanging displays for clothing.